Take time to watch the bubbles

I have found myself noticing the little things a lot more often, which I generally feel is a good measure of contentment with life. I would guess it comes with the territory of finally being at peace with what God's doing in my life at present. It took me a while to get here, and I doubt I've actually arrived as much as hit another level that I will eventually need to learn from, but as of right now I'm feeling quite content. And thus when I realized myself noticing little things (like the church steeples from the parking lot or the awesome sky last night) it made me think of all the little things I probably miss along the way when I'm too caught up with trying to make things work out the exact way I intended.

Most people explaining noticing the little things by saying you should 'stop and smell the roses'. I, however, think more along the lines of 'taking time to watch the bubbles'. I used to always love watching the bubbles rise to the surface when I was scuba diving. I don't know why it so amazed me, but it really did. And I noticed that it was on the best dives that I actually took time to do it. You would think that on the best dives I would be too busy paying attention to the fish and crabs and coral and not have time to watch bubbles, but the opposite was true. There were some great dives that I didn't even look at bubbles on, but the best ones were when I was not trying to see as much as possible the whole time I was underwater, but instead I was trying to really see that area. My first dive instructor told us on one of our check out dives to try to pick a spot and watch what comes in and out of it. It was awesome. It was one of those things where you didn't get as much an idea of what the entire area looked like, but you got a better idea of what really was going on. And consequently you saw really cool little things because you weren't busy looking for big flashy stuff. And it always happened that on those dives, where I forced myself to pay attention to little things that I always remembered to look around me instead of just in front of me and looking up was one of those directions.

So, this is what I've seen this week by looking around me and not just in front of me...

all the ants walking one way were carrying eggs and all the ants walking the other way were not carrying anything - Nikole actually pointed out the line of ants crossing the path (my parents are quite good at teaching their kids to slow down and enjoy life)

this picture was actually taken by Kim who happened to see the same storm coming across the marsh as we did

the sound of fiddler crabs running across the marsh

the smell of chlorine when I stepped in the pool to swim today (the fact I love that smell is left over from swimming days), the sound that shells make when they crunch under your feet (yes another trip to Botany allowed for this one), the total innocence of a 2 year old (one of the little girls in the nursery was walking around in my shoes which were about 10 sizes too big for her chatting away to herself), and that's just the ones that pop to mind. It's really quite amazing to see what you miss if you don't take the time to notice it!